Setting some eggs 5-13-15. Looking for some folks to hatch a long with me.

[darkbluespace]

It's weird, I am actually using self restraint this time with my shipped eggs. I have barely touched them. I will admit that in the past, with certain eggs I was nervous about hatching, that I kept checking that they were still alive until I killed them by bothering them too much. Self awareness is a good thing. It is like when you hear about someone who is so worried about an egg not hatching that they crack it open and realize that it was still alive. Why do we sabotage ourselves? It is almost like the angst of not knowing feels worse than knowing and having a negative outcome.

Anyway, I am determined to be chill this time and I did order 3 more peafowl eggs online yesterday because on a Monday afternoon, almost no one is bidding on eggs and I got a sweet deal. 3 Purple black shoulder pea eggs... I do hope I can hatch some. I also emailed a local woman who has peafowl and we are going to talk about her eggs because she doesn't know if they are fertile or what... so I hope I can get a few eggs from her because if they are fertile I probably could hatch them. I am rather obsessed with the peas right now and very excited : )

 

[FridayYet]

I made it through another day without opening the bator! (LOL) I am determined to give these shipped eggs the best shot possible by not touching them. Glad to hear of everyone's progress, and congrats darkblue on those peafowl eggs!

 

[matlock585]

It's weird, I am actually using self restraint this time with my shipped eggs. I have barely touched them. I will admit that in the past, with certain eggs I was nervous about hatching, that I kept checking that they were still alive until I killed them by bothering them too much. Self awareness is a good thing. It is like when you hear about someone who is so worried about an egg not hatching that they crack it open and realize that it was still alive. Why do we sabotage ourselves? It is almost like the angst of not knowing feels worse than knowing and having a negative outcome.

Anyway, I am determined to be chill this time and I did order 3 more peafowl eggs online yesterday because on a Monday afternoon, almost no one is bidding on eggs and I got a sweet deal. 3 Purple black shoulder pea eggs... I do hope I can hatch some. I also emailed a local woman who has peafowl and we are going to talk about her eggs because she doesn't know if they are fertile or what... so I hope I can get a few eggs from her because if they are fertile I probably could hatch them. I am rather obsessed with the peas right now and very excited : )

I too have become hardened over time to not fiddling with the eggs and being more patient. I see from your siggy that you have bourbon reds... that is what I'm trying to hatch this time... This will be about my fourth attempt to establish a turkey flock. I've already got all the vitamins and the high protein starter feed they need because I didn't want them to hatch and me not have it. My eggs were shook up, but I think they may be ok. They were only shipped about 200 some odd miles, so not like they crossed the country. Just from west TN to Middle Tn.
I've had the worst luck with turkeys so far. Out of probably around 20 or so I've hatched I've raised one to adulthood. That one that I did raise was brooded with a bunch of bantys, That is why I set all the chicken eggs several days after I set the turkeys... I want them to all hatch and brood together. I'm also planning to brood them inside in my spare bedroom. The wife may not love the idea, but she understands how hard it is to rear them from our past experience.
If I can just get one boy and one girl to adulthood I'll establish a few pens and start close breeding and get them going here on our land.
I am however also excited to see what these chicks come out looking like because I spent half a day driving and 20 bucks on my roo. My hens are blue/black orpingtons that unfortunately have a bit of jubilee orp in the mix, and the roo I got is blue Andalusian and black orp mix. The hens are big and the roo is HUGE, and all of them are in the blue/black family, so I'm excited to see what I get from them. I intend to only keep the pullets with the parents and the roos from this hatch will grow out together to see what I get, then I'll put them in breeder pens from there. My first attempt at making a big bird that is suitable for the table and for egg production.
All this candling talk is killing me... but I am going to wait till Friday, that will be day 10 for the turkeys, but after that, I'll get to candle every Monday and Friday until my lock down that is scheduled for June 4th.
Glad to hear of all the positive results so far, and I hope I can add my own to the pile here shortly.

 

[matlock585]

Hi! I'm waiting for my shipped eggs to arrive at the post office as we speak! I guess I joined this hatch-a-long a bit early! But I'm using the same incubator and plan on doing just as you said. I actually have the mini eco, but I'm glad now that I got the eco instead of the advanced because I've only worked with shipped eggs, and I probably wouldn't use the automatic turner much. Wishing you a great hatch!

You're still on track to hatch maybe a day or so behind me.... good luck! Power to the poultry!

 

[darkbluespace]

Turkeys are a handful ; ) I actually just hatched my first one a couple days ago. I had 5 eggs that made it to lockdown and this was the only one that made it! I think my humidity was too high. It has some Seramas to keep it company but I have yet to see it eat anything, it is almost like it can't see. I have just heard the horror stories... like yours! We bought the Tom and 3 hens last winter and were hoping to have lots of eggs but they laid about 40 eggs and then all 3 hens went broody. This was after they, all 3 hens, broke out of the pen daily to go lay eggs in the field. I did luck out that they ended up sitting on eggs right near the turkey pen so I reconfigured the pen so that they are in it. They are sitting on about 10 to 12 eggs and I have another 15 to 20 in the bator. We'll see, it hasn't turned out like I was expecting. Seems like the first year they lay a ton of eggs (the year before we got them) and by the second year they are ready to brood themselves. Maybe if the poults make it, we will keep them till next year and find the parents a new home. At the rate I am going I could have just bought a bunch of poults and come out ahead, well, you know, if I could keep 'em alive!

I hope your eggs do well, I'll be thinking positively for you! Keeping them indoors is probably a good plan, as long as you don't have any visitors ; )

 

[FridayYet]

Turkeys sound like fun. There's a house down the ditch trail that has a lot of heritage-type turkeys walking around the yard. They are so pretty! My husband just says "no - don't get any ideas" and we keep walking! (LOL)

I added some more water to one channel and turned the tray 180 degrees, and broke down to peek at a few eggs. One I couldn't tell, two look like blood rings (one vein horizontal) and two look healthy, with lots of veins running from the air cell down. I'm excited that I have at least a couple that look good - full day 7 candling tomorrow!

 

[NTBugtraq]

Hope you don't mind, but I'm setting (hopefully) 41 of my own eggs on Saturday or Sunday, so I'd like to hatch-a-long too. I just finished a hatch last weekend; I set 41, 5 turned out to be infertile, 20 hatched, 1 died after hatch, and 2 after pip...the rest died after lockdown. I had incorrectly kept the eggs in the turner to day 18 upside-down (pointy-side up), so mal-positions were the most likely cause of death.

My eggs are from 24 red sexlings crossed with my beautiful Black Copper Maran (BCM) as the sole rooster. This year my goal is to get to 100 layers, but ultimately to create my own strain of BCM layers (e.g. black eggs). I'm told this could happen in 3 generations of this cross by someone I trust (good knows I can't understand genetics). I have a small farm (2.5 acres) where I sell eggs, chicken meat, lotsa garlic (8,000), losta maple syrup (150L), mushrooms and an eclectic mix of other sustainable stuff.

I'm setting only eggs that are dark and reasonably sized (Large), although I have a 33g and 48g I am going to set just to see if there is any noticeable difference. I started collecting on Sunday, and so far I have 24 eggs in the turner (round-side up)...they are not in my hovabator 1588 yet. I did a test run on my bator and found it would only provide 14% humidity dry, so I won't be trying that. All my eggs have a date and weight written on them, so I can closely monitor weight loss this time. I'm also waiting for an Ova Scope High Intensity to be delivered, as my first home-made candler used a 100W bulb and I worry now about heat...it melted the shroud some already...and I never could see inside very well, so hopefully the Ova Scope will do the trick.

This time I'm going to be doing everything more-or-less by the book. Marking air sacks, tracking weight change and humidity in a spreadsheet. During my first hatch, I found that my bator recovers both heat and humidity very quickly, so I will likely candle and weigh every 2 days from day 7, as I really want to learn to identify development changes (and possibly even mal-positions). For example, I never saw an internal pip in all my candling for my previous hatch. It clearly happened, I just couldn't see it.

FWIW, I'm a retired computer security researcher, and my recent hatch was the most stimulating experience I've had in some 10 years...and while I almost completely gave up computers for anything other than fun, I'm challenging myself to come up with as much interesting data as I can this hatch...and of course, a 100% hatch-rate on the fertile eggs.

Remember, as Sally Sunshine says in her great article about assisting hatches, DO NOT RUSH THE HATCH!

 

[NTBugtraq]

Turkeys sound like fun. There's a house down the ditch trail that has a lot of heritage-type turkeys walking around the yard. They are so pretty! My husband just says "no - don't get any ideas" and we keep walking! (LOL)

I added some more water to one channel and turned the tray 180 degrees, and broke down to peek at a few eggs. One I couldn't tell, two look like blood rings (one vein horizontal) and two look healthy, with lots of veins running from the air cell down. I'm excited that I have at least a couple that look good - full day 7 candling tomorrow!

FridayYet, I have 2 day-old heritage turkeys coming some time soon. I was offered them as eggs but given my lack of experience hatching, I choose to take them as day olds. They're from a friend 10 minutes away, so no worries about avian flu (around here all bird auctions are currently cancelled, for the foreseeable future.) Anyway, point is, my friend is hatching turkeys now as they will be ready by Thanksgiving (Cdn Thanksgiving up here). So perhaps if you tell hubby you're getting them for Thanksgiving dinner, he might agree...

 

[wsl1987]

Just set 41 eggs in my bator! Will be our first time using an incubator instead of a broody, well second but after a power outage all 14 of those eggs died, so we're going all in! I'm so nervous!!

 

[altair]

I love hearing that I'm not the only one with a family that is extremely bored of hearing about my chickens and incubating! Do you mind if I join in? There is a bit of a story behind my chickens and this batch but I guess I can condense it. Well it all started at the end of last year when I hatched 5 chicks from shipped eggs brought off of eBay, it turned out that I got 3 cocks and 2 hen which isn't too bad but could of been better. Geraldine had just started to lay just as we got rid of the two last cockerels, so I thought about a week later why there is a chance her eggs might be fertile why not bung them in. There are four eggs that have been put in on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Nothing might come of it but I thought why not whilst I've got the chance and I might as well share it with you fab bunch if you'll have me. Hope I didn't bore you all too much, Jack

Glad to have another participant! What breed did you purchase from eBay?